One of Haydneum’s – the Hungarian Centre for Early Music Foundation’s – most important professional partners in recent years has been the Hungarian National Museum Public Collection Centre National Széchényi Library (NSZL). Since 2022, the two institutions have been working together to digitize the Esterházy Collection, along with numerous other music archives from Hungarian court residences, cities, and churches.

Haydneum recently held its season-opening press conference, during which attendees were also informed about the results of its collaboration with the NSZL.

The newly published collection contains over 800 items and more than 50,000 pages of material, featuring works by a total of thirty-five composers. Alongside Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), the collection includes outstanding contemporaries such as Gregor Joseph Werner (1693–1766), Michael Haydn (1737–1806), Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (1736–1809), and Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766–1803). A particular highlight of the collection is the inclusion of contemporary copies of works by internationally renowned composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764), and Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757).

Staff delegated by the Haydneum catalogue, restore, and photograph these materials and then produce modern sheet music editions from them. These editions are featured in Haydneum’s concerts and recordings.

Tamás Mészáros, Head of the Collection Preservation Department at the NSZL, announced that from now on, these exceptional documents will be freely accessible in high resolution via the Copia digital platform. He stated, “When a public collection and the performing arts can connect in this way, value is created instantly; in this case, the results can be heard immediately.”

In his message, Director General Dávid Rózsa emphasized that the Esterházy Project is a model example of partnership between public collections and performing arts institutions. As a result of this collaboration, previously unknown works have been brought to the public—often for the first time in centuries.